The Hill News

Republicans rejected slightly better-than-expected job creation in July as not good enough on Friday, using it as political fodder against President Obama.

The unemployment rate ticked downward to 9.1 percent in July after the economy added 117,000 jobs last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). June's anemic job growth was revised upward to reflect 46,000 jobs added.

But those numbers weren't good enough for the Republicans seeking Obama's job in 2012.

"When you see what this president has done to the economy in just three years, you know why America doesn't want to find out what he can do in eight," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R).

"Despite t! oday's jobs report showing a slight improvement, with 9.1 percent unemployment, it is still evidence that the President's failed economic policies are digging us deeper into a hole," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said in a statement.

Said former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R): "Today's dismal jobs report is a far cry from the hope and change that President Obama promised on the campaign trail … It's time for a new president to point us back in the right direction, and I am the only candidate who has proposed a specific economic plan that will create jobs and grow our economy."

Jobs and the economy still remain a major issue in the presidential campaign, and the unemployment rate remains above nine percent; the administration had projected that unemployment would stand between six and seven percent by this point with the implementation of its stimulus plan.

The sluggish performance of the economy has prompted Obama to retrain his focus ! on jobs and the economy during this month's August recess foll! owing we eks during which D.C. was consumed by a bruising debate surrounding the debt-ceiling. Those considerations are part of the motivation for the president's mid-August bus trip through the Midwest.

Democrats, though, pushed back against Republican criticism of the president's management of the economy, casting the GOP presidential hopefuls as even worse for the economy.

"As we learn more and more about the Republican presidential candidates, it’s clear that they aren’t offering any new ideas.  Nowhere is this more true than on the economy.  The field of Republican candidates simply offer the same failed Republican economic policies of the last decade that nearly drove our country into a second Great Depression," sa! id Democratic National Committee (DNC) communications director Brad Woodhouse in a memo Friday to the producers of Sunday morning news programs.